


you'll never know unless we go (so let me show you)

by doctorkaitlyn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Awkward Derek, Deputy Derek Hale, First Dates, Fluff, M/M, Making Out, Oblivious Derek, Slight Age Difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-09 21:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the three years that he's been a deputy with the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department, Derek has gone up against a number of things that would make most people freeze with absolute terror.  Most of these things (including taking down a PCP crazed teenager with a knife) didn't even make him bat an eye but asking Stiles Stilinski out on a date?</p><p>Now <i>that's</i> terrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll never know unless we go (so let me show you)

**Author's Note:**

> So sometimes, I get this urge to write fluff. Kind of pointless fluff. And that's essentially what this is and I had a ball writing it; I hope you lovely readers enjoy. 
> 
> PS: Title comes from the amazing song [Wolf Like Me](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03hC_Ml8aAM) by TV on The Radio.

In the three years that he had been a deputy for the Beacon Hills Sheriff's Department, Derek had gone through a number of situations that he knew would have made other people freeze from sheer terror. Two days after he joined the department, he'd found himself being attacked by a knife wielding teenager who'd somehow gotten hold of some PCP but he'd managed to take the kid down without a scratch or a moment of hesitation. Two days before Christmas, while he was off duty, he had walked into a bank downtown and found himself staring straight down the barrel of a shotgun. The guy holding it had been tall and twitchy and the look in his eyes practically screamed regret so Derek talked to him, staring past the gun into his eyes, holding his hands up in surrender. After a minute or so of Derek just talking, of him repeating the words he remembered from his police academy lectures, the man had lowered the gun just slightly. 

It had been enough. Derek tackled him to the ground and kept him pinned there until the sheriff arrived and he was pretty sure that his heartbeat barely increased the entire time. 

But no matter what the other deputies said about him, Derek wasn't completely fearless. He was massively afraid of both deep water and raging fires and snakes made his skin crawl but there was something else that scared him, something that made his heart start skipping along at double time.

Facing a drug addict with a knife was one thing but asking Stiles Stilinski on a date? Now _that_ was a terrifying idea. 

He knew that it was stupid to be so afraid of something so simple, but really, it was a fear of many facets. A lot of it had to do with the fact that Derek had been working for Stiles' dad for three years and although Sheriff Stilinski was usually pretty easy-going, he was more than capable of unleashing a rather frightening amount of rage, particularly if someone was threatening or endangering a child. On one particular occasion that Derek witnessed, some asshole had been stalking one of Stiles' close friends and Derek remembered all too clearly how the entire department had echoed with the sounds of the sheriff yelling at the creep. And while Stiles had always been extremely independent, even back when he was sixteen and had a buzzcut and drove his Jeep far too fast, John had always been extremely protective of him. In fact, there'd been one time where Stiles had a brief fling with this kid named Danny (whom he'd met at the station, actually; Derek vaguely remembered something about the kid hacking into their servers) and whenever Stiles brought him along on one of his numerous late night visits to the station, the sheriff had a tendency to start cleaning his pistol at his desk. 

Come to think of it, Derek thought that tendency might have explained why Stiles and Danny were only together for a month. 

So yes, that was all rather intimidating, but it wasn't just that. A lot of it had do with Stiles himself. While Derek was pretty sure that he'd had _something_ for the kid since day one (because he had never been a paragon for self-control, even if it was regarding a kid seven years younger than him), he'd also seen Stiles grow up a lot during that time. He'd grown his hair out, his shoulders had gotten broader, he'd gone from wearing oversized hoodies to wearing plaid and stripes almost daily. He went from tripping over his own feet to being first line on the high school's lacrosse team and even though he still had a tendency to forget how long his limbs were, he had gotten substantially better at not knocking things off of Derek's desk when he was trying to illustrate a point. He hadn't crashed his Jeep in over a year and when he graduated high school, he was second in his class. He'd evolved into one of the most selfless, kindest people Derek had ever met and it was not at all difficult to think of a incident that demonstrated all of those tenets. 

The summer between Stiles' junior and senior years, Derek had gotten a domestic assault call at three AM and later on that morning, the department brought in the wife so that they could ask her a few quick questions about her locked-up partner. Stiles had walked through the door with breakfast for his dad but as soon as he saw the woman's two young children sitting in the lobby, he'd dropped the breakfast on Derek's desk and sat down beside them. He'd played eye-spy and told them stories off the top of his head and gave them quarters from his pocket so that they could buy a candy bar from the vending machine and when the woman had come back out, both of them had been leaning against Stiles' shoulders, fast asleep. 

When he looked back on it, Derek thought that might have been the day where he realized that his little crush on the sheriff's kid had evolved into something a lot more serious. 

So he did want to ask the kid out, he really, really did, especially since he was finally eighteen and Derek didn't have to try and banish the dirty thoughts that popped up in his head at a rather alarming rate. But his success rate with relationships was very, very low (okay, it was pretty well at zero) and someone once told him that he broke everything he touched and although he knew that really, that wasn't true, he still didn't want to risk it with Stiles. 

Plus, he wasn't entirely certain that Stiles even liked him. His older sister said he was blind and (as she put it) “that kid's wanted you to fuck him for two and a half years Derek, Jesus Christ,” but the thing was, he saw Stiles with everyone, saw how he flirted like it was going out of fashion and most of the time, Derek didn't even think that he was doing it on purpose. Flirting was just Stiles' default setting. 

Sure, he did do things sometimes that Derek thought _might_ have been fueled by more than just simple friendliness. There had been a few occasions where Derek was working the night shift and at two or three in the morning, Stiles came in, jacked up on energy drinks or too much Adderall. No matter how many times Derek said he had paperwork to do, Stiles insisted on sitting on the corner of his desk, feet swinging back and forth, trying his damnedest to feed Derek gummy worms or Twizzlers or whatever other candy he'd procured and although Derek hadn't seen him do that to any of the other deputies, he still wasn't convinced that it wasn't just another example of Stiles being Stiles. 

Okay, so maybe, when it came right down to it, he was afraid of rejection. He was twenty-five years old and scared of being rejected by a kid who was just barely on the right side of legal and if that wasn't pathetic, he didn't know what was. 

So if he'd had it his way, he never would have asked the kid out. But fate, apparently, had a different idea because one summer night, after he finished work at eight PM, he discovered that the road he normally took home was blocked off for some kind of construction purpose. The quickest detour took him right past the Stilinski's and although he tried his best to resist looking out the window, his self-control failed and before he could stop himself, he pulled over to the curb and stopped. The sheriff was working the overnight shift and there was a light blazing in a room on the top floor, a room that Derek was pretty sure belonged to Stiles. It would have been so easy to get out of the car, so easy to get up and knock on the door and if he made it that far, he was pretty sure it would have been simple to spit out the words _wanna go out sometime?_

He _knew_ that, on a purely theoretical level, it would be easy but he also knew that he would much rather deal with another teenager high on PCP than actually do it. 

Before he could shift his car back into drive, his phone started vibrating in his pocket and although he was sure that it was going to be the sheriff calling him back into work for some reason, he was instead met with a ridiculous picture of Stiles on his screen. It was over a year old, from when Derek had first gotten his new phone; as soon as he'd mentioned it to Stiles, the kid had taken it, snapped an absurd picture of himself and then made it so that said picture popped up on the (admittedly rare) occasions that he called Derek. 

Derek knew that he could have changed it if he sat down and took the time to figure it out, but truthfully, he kind of liked it in a weird way. 

“Stiles? Are you okay?” he asked, trying his best to sound calm because this was just his fucking luck, just his luck that the object of his affections would call while he was kind of surreptitiously creeping him. Laura was going to be _so_ proud of him. 

“Yeah man, I'm fine. Just wonderin' what you were up to. You're off work now, right?”

“Yeah, I'm driving home now,” he said, wondering how many brain cells he would lose if he bashed his head off the steering wheel. 

“Really?” Derek recognized that voice all too well, recognized the twinkle of mischief in it. This night was just getting worse and worse. “So, you mean that's _not_ your black Camaro parked outside?” 

Fuck. When Derek looked back up at Stiles' window, he could see Stiles silhouetted against the light, obviously holding his cell phone in his hand. 

“I was just... driving by,” he said and he was really, really tempted to just hang up the phone and speed off because this was just getting more and more embarrassing by the second and he was almost positive that grown men were not supposed to blush like thirteen year old girls. 

“Did you wanna come in?” 

“Um.” Derek wanted to say yes, wanted to with everything he had but for some reason the words weren't coming out but then, on Stiles' end, he heard a loud thud followed by a string of extremely explicit curse words. 

“Stiles?” 

“Sorry, just tripped over my shoes,” Stiles said. “Don't move.” 

“What?” There was more rustling on the other end of the line and then another loud bang and when Derek looked towards the house, Stiles was jogging across his lawn, shoes untied, still in the process of pulling on one of his egregiously bright plaid shirts. Before Derek could say another word, Stiles was yanking his passenger door open and sliding inside, tucking his cell phone into the front pocket of his jeans. 

“Hey,” he said and there was a smug grin forming on his mouth, the same mouth that Derek had imagined kissing probably hundreds of times. “So, you gonna explain why you're sitting outside my house or you gonna make me guess?” 

Derek knew he had two options: the first being that he could lie, but he was ninety percent sure that Stiles would see through him immediately. The other option was to tell the truth and while that option was even more cringe-inducing, he thought it was better to just put it out there, as opposed to getting caught in a lie and having to tell the truth anyways.

“I was just driving by and I saw that you were home. And...”

“And what?” Stiles rested his back against the door and brought his legs up onto the seat and if it was anyone else, Derek would have literally tossed them out of the car but because it was Stiles and since he was pretty sure that he would have let Stiles get away with anything up to (and maybe including) murder, he let it slip with only a quick grimace. 

“And... I was thinking about asking if you wanted to... go out.” Once the words were out, he felt like a massive weight had fallen off of his shoulders but he still felt like a complete and utter idiot. Sure, he had imagined getting up the nerve to ask Stiles out on more than one occasion but even in his imagination, spontaneity had never been part of the deal. He'd always had a plan, always had everything figured out but now, he felt oddly powerless and that in itself was a rather unnerving feeling. 

“Derek, you're a moron,” Stiles said but there was no ill intent in the words and when Derek looked up, Stiles was practically _beaming_ at him. Before Derek could even begin to process the sudden influx of complex emotions that were swirling in his brain, Stiles was diving across the car, his flailing arm knocking Derek's air freshener off the rear view mirror before his fingers wrapped around the collar of Derek's leather jacket. He pressed a hard, close-mouthed kiss against Derek's mouth but before he could part his lips and respond, Stiles was moving away just as quickly as he'd dived in, returning to the passenger seat with a giant grin on his face. 

“Three years, Derek,” he said. “ _Three years_ of waiting for you to make a move.”

“What?" he stuttered, cursing his inability to say anything even remotely intelligent.

“Jesus, I thought it was obvious,” Stiles continued, rolling his eyes. “Derek, I sat on your desk and fed you gummy worms by hand, for Christ’s sake. ” 

“You _tried_ to feed me gummy worms,” Derek corrected and the look that Stiles threw in his direction was one he was all too familiar with; it was his one that clearly said _are you actually serious?_

“Well, it wasn't _my_ fault you wouldn't take them. But what the hell else was that supposed to mean? Derek, you don't hand feed gummy worms to people you're not interested in.” 

“ _You_ might.” Stiles just rolled his eyes again and stretched his legs out across the cab until his feet were squarely in Derek's lap. The cuff of his jeans had shifted enough to expose a patch of pale skin above his sock and Derek slowly ran his thumb over the skin, swallowing around the small lump that had taken up residence in his throat. Stiles sighed quietly and stretched his legs out further and Derek took advantage of the new skin that was being exposed and for a few moments, the only noises in the car were Stiles' quiet sighs and hums. 

“So?” When Derek looked up, Stiles had one eyebrow arched and his mouth was hanging open slightly, a mannerism he'd never grown out of and one that Derek hoped he always possessed. 

“So what?” Even though he'd been running his fingers over Stiles' leg for nearly five minutes, Derek still felt like Stiles was about ten steps ahead of him, because despite everything, he was still finding it difficult to fully comprehend the fact that this kid, this hyperactive, sarcastic, kinda perfect kid, had wanted him for three years and not once had he even really noticed. 

“Oh my God Derek, you are hopeless. Where are you taking me?”

“Right now?”

“Yep. You said you were gonna ask me out. I accept. So, take me somewhere.” He swung his legs back over and when he extended them into the footwell, his shirt rode up just the slightest, exposing a pale sliver of hipbone. Derek forced himself to look away because if Stiles kept being... well, kept being himself, the only place Derek was going to take him was back to his apartment and while his self-control was fairly non-existent, he also knew that having sex on the first date just screamed _bad idea._ So, he started the car back up and wracked his brain for date ideas and if he nearly swerved off the road when Stiles suddenly dropped one hand onto his thigh and started toying with a hole in his jeans, well, no one else needed to know about that. 

There was exactly one all-night diner in Beacon Hills and when they got there, it was pretty well empty, which meant that they scored a corner booth with ease. Derek tried his best to stop being nervous but he hadn't been on an actual date in _years_ and when he tried to assure himself that it wasn't a big deal, that it was just Stiles, his nervousness escalated to the point where he knew he was being a terrible conversation partner but the words he wanted to say just wouldn't come out. 

And then Stiles threw one of his curly fries across the table, which promptly bounced off of Derek's nose and onto his plate. 

“Derek, stop freaking out,” he said, shoving a handful of his fries into his mouth. “Quit over thinking everything. It's just me.” He went to stick another fry into his mouth but, acting on impulse, Derek reached across the table and snatched it from his hands, popping it into his own mouth and the look on Stiles' face was absolutely _priceless._

“You bastard,” he gasped and when Derek reached for his cup of coffee, Stiles grabbed it and drained what was left of it in one gulp. Derek was pretty sure that Stiles didn't need any more caffeine so in turn, he snatched Stiles' glass of Coke and kept it securely out of his reach.

“Truce?” Stiles asked, doing his best puppy-dog expression from across the table but when Derek shook his head anyways, another curly fry hit him square between the eyes. It was only after the waitress sent them a death glare that rivaled Sheriff Stilinski's that they stopped with the food snatching and Derek could feel himself grinning like an idiot but he couldn't stop, especially since Stiles was grinning right back at him. He'd slid his shoe off at some point and his foot was pressed against Derek's underneath the table and Derek was pretty sure that he'd never played footsies but he figured that there was no time like the present to see if it was all that it was cracked up to be. 

As it turned out, it was pretty goddamn awesome.

By the time they left, it was after eleven and Derek was pretty sure that there was still french fry grease on his face, even though he'd attempted to scrub it off in the bathroom but that fact didn't perturb him nearly as much as it should have. Stiles was licking the remnants of cherry pie off of his fingers and Derek had always known that the kid had an oral fixation but he was fairly certain that Stiles was playing it up. He _had_ to be. 

“So, here's what I'm thinking,” Stiles said once they got back into the car, tongue flicking out at the tiny red smear of pie filling that had stained the corner of his mouth. “You should come back and watch a movie with me.” 

“Tonight?” 

“Yeah. My dad's not gonna be home till morning and I'll be bored and frankly, I kind of want to make out with you.”

“I thought you said you wanted to watch a movie,” Derek said and Stiles just rolled his eyes again. He had a feeling he was going to be seeing that action a lot, so long as things kept progressing as well as they had been. 

“I do. But I'm capable of multitasking.” The look in Stiles' amber eyes was promising all sorts of obscene things and although Derek didn't plan on experiencing all of those things in one night, the look was enough to make him hightail it out of the diner's parking lot. For the entirety of the short drive back to the Stilinski's, Derek could feel Stiles staring at him and he didn't dare take his eyes off of the road, because getting into a car accident wasn't really on his bucket list. The fact that Stiles was tracing a figure eight on his knee really didn't help and by the time he finally pulled into Stiles' driveway, Derek was about ready to say _screw the movie_ and drag Stiles into the backseat instead. 

He barely managed to resist (because that little voice in the back of his head was screaming _do not screw this up_ ) and Stiles dragged him by the hand up to his bedroom. It was a lot more organized than Derek had expected; he'd been prepared for clothes strewn wall to wall and a rumpled up bed but everything was actually in order. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, Stiles lunged for his desk, grabbed his laptop and began typing rapidly. Within seconds, a video file was playing and seconds after _that_ , Stiles grabbed Derek's jacket and pushed him down onto the bed. He clambered on top of him and Derek barely had time to grab a breath before Stiles was kissing him, nipping at his bottom lip and this, this was _definitely_ something Derek could get used to. 

He had absolutely no idea what movie Stiles had put on because for the next hour, the only thing on his mind was the writhing nineteen year old who kept trying to get into his pants. Stiles was testing the very limits of his self-control because although he really, _really_ didn't want to fall right into sex on the first date, Stiles was making the most beautiful noises against his neck and his mouth. At some point, Derek had rolled them over so that Stiles was underneath him and almost as soon as Stiles' back had hit the bed, his hands had shoved off Derek's jacket. From that point on, his hands were absolutely relentless; one minute they were running through Derek's hair, blunt nails dragging over his scalp and the next, they were pulling his shirt out of his jeans and scratching at his lower back. Yet seemingly every five minutes, those nimble fingers would make an attempt at unbuckling Derek's belt and, although it caused him actual pain, he dutifully moved them away and every single time, Stiles whined against his mouth or his neck or his shoulder, wherever he happened to be at the time. 

“Derek, _please._ ”

“Stiles, it's still our first date,” he sighed after what was probably the sixth attempt and the frustrated groan that came from Stiles' mouth was almost enough to make him reconsider.

Almost. 

“Well then tomorrow, you are taking me out on our second date,” he said, biting down where Derek's neck met his shoulder. “And then we are coming back here, goddamn it.”

“Fine by me,” Derek groaned before diving back in for more kisses and five minutes later, when Stiles attempted to roll on top of him again, his momentum ended up sending both of them to the floor in a heap of limbs. 

“Stiles?” he asked because he was pretty sure that Stiles had gotten the worst of the fall. 

“I'm okay,” he said after a moment and then he was leaning back on his knees, tossing both of his shirts across the room and grabbing for Derek again and all Derek could think was goddamn teenagers and their stamina.

Not that he was complaining. Not at all. 

***

 

They stayed on the floor until the first movie finished up and while Stiles brought another one up on his computer, Derek pulled himself back up onto the bed. There was a painful kink in his shoulders and it was nearly two o'clock in the morning and he knew that he really should have been heading back to his apartment but he had far better things to do. For starters, he'd made it his goal to suck a line of hickies down Stiles' chest because frankly, the purple blotches contrasted beautifully with his pale skin and while they were on the floor, he'd only made it to the bottom of his ribs. 

But after awhile, things slowed down; Stiles ended up lying beside him, fingers just barely tracing against Derek's hipbones and the last thing Derek remembered was Stiles murmuring _should have done this years ago, Derek_ , to which he'd only nodded and slid his tongue over Stiles' swollen bottom lip. 

And then, he was waking up to birdsong and sunlight streaming through the window. Stiles was laying on his stomach beside him, face smooshed into the pillow. There was a hickey flourishing on his shoulder and although Derek had no recollection of making such a mark, he thought it was gorgeous nonetheless. He leaned in to press his mouth to it but before he could, he heard someone clear their throat and when he whipped around, Sheriff Stilinski was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, still wearing his uniform. 

“Good morning, Derek,” he said and although Derek couldn't quite tell what emotions were in his voice, the tone still made him feel like a complete and utter jackass. 

“Uh. Good morning John,” he muttered and beside him, Stiles grunted and shifted in his sleep. “This...”

“It's exactly what it looks like,” the sheriff interrupted, leaving no room for discussion and Derek quickly nodded, slowly sliding out from underneath Stiles' outstretched arm so that he could sit up. “Can't say I'm surprised though. But, I mean you two, did you, well, you know...”

“No!” Derek quickly said and he was glad that the sheriff couldn't see his back, because he was pretty sure Stiles had scratched him hard enough to leave marks, which definitely wouldn't have done anything to make the sheriff believe him. “No, that didn't happen.”

“Well, that's good.” John sounded downright cheerful and he muffled a yawn with his hand. “That's good, Derek.” He disappeared from the doorway and Derek sighed deeply, running a hand over his face. It was too damn early to be awake. 

“Derek?” 

“"Yeah?” The sheriff had stuck his head back in the doorway and there was a look in his eyes that Derek had seen before and this was _not_ going to be good. 

“You work tomorrow, right?” He nodded and the look in the sheriff's eyes amplified. “Good. Remind me to order some new tasers when you come in, alright?” 

“Yes, sir.” As soon as he was gone, Derek sighed with relief and started rooting through the clothes on the floor for his shirt. Although the sheriff's reaction definitely could have been worse, his thinly-veiled threat was still more than a little terrifying and he didn't really want to be around when he got out of the shower, just in case his mind changed. 

“Don't worry 'bout him.” When Derek looked back, Stiles' eyes were half-open and he was nuzzling his face further into his pillow but he still sounded surprisingly awake. “He thinks it's part of his dad duties. If he didn't like you, he would have showed you his shotgun. S'what he did to Danny. Now...” His hand flailed out and slapped into Derek's hip, thumb sliding under the top of his jeans. 

“Go shut that door and get back over here. I'm not ready to get up yet.” 

“You're bossy in the morning,” Derek muttered but by the time he finished his sentence, he had already done what Stiles had asked and climbed back into the bed. 

“And I like cuddling,” Stiles muttered, rolling over onto his side and throwing his arm and leg over Derek. “You're gonna have to deal with it.”

Derek really didn't think that dealing with it was going to be an issue.

**Author's Note:**

> would you believe that this was only supposed to be about 1500 words long? I have a problem. A serious problem.
> 
> as always, I can be found at banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com so if you've got any questions or, hey, if you want to make a request for a fic, drop on by. (:


End file.
